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National polls continue to show public is opposed to impeachment

Posted: Tuesday, December 15, 1998

By Ronald BrownsteinLos Angeles Times

WASHINGTON -- As the House of Representatives nears its historic decision on President Clinton's fate, Americans remain overwhelmingly opposed to impeachment and convinced that both parties are operating far more out of political calculation than moral conviction, a survey by the Pew Research Center and other new national polls over the weekend have found.

The Pew poll, released Monday, found a sharp decline since earlier this fall in public assessments of both the GOP congressional leadership and the Republican Party overall, and suggested that the party could suffer further damage if impeachment passed the House on Thursday. While only one in 20 of those polled said their opinion of Clinton would decline if impeachment was approved, one in three said they would think less of House Republicans.

For all that, the poll -- which surveyed 1,201 adults from Dec. 9 through Dec. 13 -- found no evidence that the prospect of impeachment was generating huge unease in the public: Only one-third of Americans said they were closely following the story, no higher than this measure has been all year.

''The overall message is that the public continues to support Bill Clinton, but they are taking this in stride,'' said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. ''This step so far hasn't panicked the public.''

If anything, the new polls suggest that public opinion may prove unpredictably volatile as the nation careens into the first House vote on impeaching a president in 130 years. For instance, in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Organization Inc. survey taken Saturday and Sunday, 62 percent of respondents said Clinton should not resign. Yet an ABC/Washington Post survey taken at the same time -- and released Monday night -- found that a striking 58 percent of those polled said Clinton should resign, rather than contest a Senate trial, if he is impeached -- even though 61 percent said he should not be impeached in the first place, and just 13 percent believe the country would be better off if he is removed from office.

The Pew survey found enormous skepticism about the motivations of both parties in the intensifying crisis. Less than one in five of those polled said they believed Republicans were pursuing impeachment because they considered Clinton's offenses ''serious enough to end his presidency,'' while just over seven in 10 said ''political reasons'' were driving the GOP.

Democrats scored only slightly better, with about one in four respondents saying the party was motivated by the belief that Clinton's offenses didn't justify removal, and six in 10 seeing politics as the driving force.

On the core issue, the flurry of surveys found only modest movement after last week's emotional and tense Judiciary Committee proceedings. ''There has been no sea change in public opinion,'' Kohut said.

Overall, Pew found that just 29 percent said Clinton should be ''impeached and removed from office'' while 67 percent said he should not. After a week of blistering oratory from Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, Clinton's approval rating remained at 61 percent in the Pew survey.

What makes those findings even more striking is that most Americans now accept the GOP's central contention: that Clinton committed perjury.

The Gallup survey last weekend found that two-thirds felt this way. Yet Americans continue to resist the Republican conclusion that such an offense should force Clinton's removal from office.

Over the weekend, other surveys divided questions about impeachment by the House and removal by the Senate. Framing the question that way found Republicans making some progress at building support for impeachment -- but still facing strong resistance. In the Gallup survey, for instance, 38 percent said they wanted their representative to vote for impeachment, while 59 percent wanted a no vote. That's up from 32 percent support for impeachment before last week's hearings. The ABC/Washington Post poll found similar movement.

The new polls found considerable support for the option of censuring, rather than impeaching, Clinton. So far, House GOP leaders have indicated they will block any attempt to allow a vote on censure.

In the Gallup poll, 57 percent of those surveyed said Congress should censure Clinton instead of removing him; 41 percent of Republicans, 59 percent of independents and 68 percent of Democrats agreed with that sentiment.

All of these surveys illuminated the jagged partisan divide that has complicated the political equation for wavering members of Congress.

In the Pew survey, just 46 percent of those surveyed said they had a favorable view of the Republican Party, while 47 percent said they viewed the party negatively. That's a considerable drop from early September -- before the House authorized the impeachment inquiry -- when 56 percent viewed the party positively, and just 37 percent negatively. By contrast, in the new survey, 59 percent have a favorable view of the Democratic Party, and only 34 percent view it unfavorably, figures that are unchanged since September.

The poll found that Republicans have suffered the sharpest declines among groups that have traditionally bolstered their coalition: whites, men, those earning more than $75,000 annually, and above all, college graduates, just 43 percent of whom now view the GOP favorably, down from 60 percent in September.